warholstars.org

Andy Warhol Pre-Pop

Artists who incorporated comic strip imagery into their
paintings prior to 1960 included Kurt Schwitters, Öyvind
Fahlström,
Jess (Collins), Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Ray Johnson and Warhol's
first roommate in New York, Philip Pearlstein.
In 1947
the Dada artist, Kurt Schwitters, incorporated comic strips into his
collage For Kate, a work often referred to as a precursor of Pop.
Rauschenberg, who borrowed Schwitter's grid patterns for his Combine paintings,
included
comic strips in works such as Charlene (1954), Small Red Painting (1954)
and Nebus (1955). Jasper Johns used over painted imagery from the
comic strip
Alley Oop for his painting of the same name in 1958. Öyvind
Fahlström
wrote the article, "The Comics as an Art" in 1954 and during 1957
- 1959 reshaped images from Mad magazine for his appropriately titled
work, Feast
on Mad.(2) San Francisco based artist
Jess (Collins) rearranged Dick Tracy comic strips for his eight part series Tricky
Cad produced from 1954 - 1959. New York artist Ray Johnson incorporated
images of Little Orphan Annie, The Little King and Dick Tracy into collages
and mail art prior to 1960.(3) Philip
Pearlstein did expressionistic paintings of Superman in the early 1950s,
although only one canvas, owned by George Klauber, survives
from 1952.(4)

Comic strip imagery was also used by British Pop
artists in the 1950s. John McHale included two comic book images in his 1953 Transistor collage series. In 1954 Peter Blake painted the first of two paintings
with the same title, Children Reading Comics.

PETER BLAKE

The 1954 version of Peter Blake's Children Reading Comics reproduced
a double page spread of Eagle comics(5),
while the second version, painted
in 1956, featured two adult-looking children, one with an eye patch, peering
out from
behind
a newspaper apparently turned to the comics section. Like Warhol, Blake would
later do a series of gold paintings (in 1959) and would also incorporate
images
of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe into works such as Got a Girl (1960/61)
and Girlie Door (1959)(6) which
pre-dated Warhol's usage of that imagery. Blake's well-known Self Portrait
With Badges (1961)
featured an image of Elvis on the cover of an album held by a denim-clad
Blake wearing Converse trainers.

Peter Blake:

"I wanted to make an art that was the visual
equivalent of pop music. When I made a portrait of Elvis I was hoping
for an audience of 16 year-old girl Elvis fans, although that never really
worked."(6a)

In
approximately 1955 Warhol drew an image of of a tattooed woman holding a
rose for a promotional
flyer that featured his home phone number. The same year Peter Blake painted Louella,
World's Most Tattooed Lady. Both tattooed
ladies were covered with found imagery. The tattoos of Blake's
lady appear to be segments of newspaper articles and headlines whereas the
tattoos of Warhol's lady are company logos and products such as Hunt's Ketchup
and Lucky Strike cigarettes.

Although Blake's work would become widely known in the U.S.
during the sixties, not least of all because he illustrated the cover of
the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's album in 1967, he was still a student
at the Royal College of Art when he painted his tattooed lady. It is highly
unlikely that Warhol would have been aware of Blake's work in the mid-1950s.
An article on Blake did appear in issue no. 18 of the Royal College of Art's
magazine, Ark,
in November 1956, but it is doubtful that Warhol was aware of it, although
the magazine was distributed internationally, with subscribers in 32
countries and was often referred to in articles
that
appeared
in other
art publications.(7) Later, Blake's paintings
would be included in the "International Exhibition of the New Realists" show
at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York at the end of 1962 but in the mid-1950s
the American art world was still focused on non-representational abstraction.
Jackson Pollock remained America's biggest art star at the time, at least
in the general press. In 1956 Time magazine dubbed him "Jack
the Dripper" and his untimely death in an automobile accident the same
year only increased his fame. One of Pollock's paintings, Galaxy,
had originally been named after the comic strip character, The Little King,
but Pollock later over-painted it and gave it a new title.(8)

It is interesting to note that artists on different
continents were using found imagery from popular culture at around the same
time although there is no evidence that Andy Warhol was aware of Blake
in the 1950s or that Blake was aware of Warhol. Blake, would later
comment, "I'd already started by the time I came across him [Warhol].
I'd made this thing with Captain Webb matchboxes which he [Warhol] couldn't
possibly
have seen but it did anticipate his soup boxes. Things seemed to be happening
at the same time although we wouldn't have known what the other was doing."(8b)Blake was, however, aware of the work of Jasper Johns and Robert
Rauschenberg during the 1950s.

Peter Blake:

"... from about 1954 I realised that I could paint
the subjects I liked such as wrestlers and strippers and the rest of
it. I was also aware of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg in America
who anticipated
Warhol and Lichtenstein and I definitely based some collages on their
work."(8c)

LAWRENCE ALLOWAY AND THE FIRST USE OF THE TERM "POP ART" IN PRINT

The same issue of Ark magazine (November 1956) that included the article
on Blake also included an article,"But Today We Collect Ads," by the architects Alison and Peter Smithson
in
which they used the term "pop art" as an abbreviation for "popular
art." It was the first time that the term appeared in print although Lawrence Alloway is sometimes incorrectly credited with first using the term in his essay The Arts and the Mass Media.

Lawrence Alloway was a British art writer who wrote reviews for the U.K. magazine, Art News and Reviews (now called Art Review). Although the Wikipedia entry for Alloway states that he starting writing reviews for the magazine in 1943, the first issue of the journal was actually published on February 12, 1949. Alloway also organized the the exhibition, Collages
and Objects,
at the I.C.A. in London during October and November 1954 which featured
work by
Eduardo Paolozzi, as well as the Dada artists Max
Ernst
and Marcel
Duchamp. Alloway first traveled to the U.S. in 1958 and met Jasper Johns
and Robert Rauschenberg during that visit.(18) In
1961 he moved to New York to become the senior curator at the
Guggenheim Museum where he would remain until 1966.(19) In
1963 he curated the "Six Painters and the Object" exhibition
at the Guggenheim, which ran from March 14 - June 12, and included
Warhol's Silver Disaster No. 6 (1963), in addition to work by Robert Rauschenberg, Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist.

Alloway's essay, "The Arts and the Mass Media" was published in Architectural Design magazine in February, 1958. For decades, art writers have been crediting Alloway with originating the term "pop art" in his essay, but the term never actually appeared in the essay. Alloway was partially responsible for the confusion. In an essay by him which first appeared in Auction magazine in February 1962 and was later reprinted in a collection of essays by Alloway titled Topics in American Art Since 1945 (NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1975) as the chapter "Pop Art: The Words," Alloway wrote, "The term [Pop Art], originated in England by me, was meant as a description of mass communications, especially, but not exclusively, visual ones. By the winter of 1957-58 the term was in use, either as Pop Culture or Pop Art." The latter sentence is footnoted, "The first published appearance of the terms that I know is: Lawrence Alloway. 'The Arts and the Mass Media.' Architectural Design, February, 1958." (TA119) Alloway may have confused his "Arts and the Mass Media" article with another article he wrote with a similar title, "Notes on Abstract Art and the Mass Media," which appeared in the February 27 - March 12, 1960 issue of the U.K. magazine, Art News and Review (now Art Review magazine), in which he did use the term "pop art" (in small letters) to refer to popular art such as Hollywood movies. It was not meant to designate an actual art movement. The article was a review of an exhibition by "The Cambridge Group" - Tim Wallis, James Meller, George Coral and Raymond Wilson. Alloway's claim that he originated the term "Pop Art" is curious because in an earlier article, "Development of British Pop" published in Lucy R. Lippard's 1966 book, Pop Art, he denied that he originated the term, writing "The term 'Pop Art' is credited to me, but I don't know precisely when it was first used... sometime between the winter of 1954-55 the phrase acquired currency in conversation, in connection with the shared work and discussion among members of the Independent Group." The Smithsons and Alloway were both part of the group. (LA27)

In the United States,
the first official acceptance of the term "Pop Art" was during a symposium
held on December 13, 1962 at the Museum of Modern
Art, moderated by Peter Selz. Some of the terms previously applied to the
new art but rejected by the symposium were "neo - Dada" and "New
Realism."(10)

THE INDEPENDENT GROUP

The Independent Group was a group of British artists, architects and design
theorists exploring
the growth of the popular arts and their relation to the fine
arts. Its members included Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton and John McHale, all of
whom used comic book imagery in their artwork. Beginning in 1946,
Paolozzi produced a series of collages using found imagery that are often
referred
to as early
examples
of British Pop.(11) However, The collages
were meant for his own reference and not intended as finished artwork.
What
has
since
become
known
as I Was
A Rich Man's Plaything, featured a comic book pin up girl, a Coca Cola
advertisement and the word "Pop!" in a sound-effect balloon.

BUNK!THE YOUNG GROUP

In
April 1952, Paolozzi presented samples of his found imagery at the ICA in
London. The collages were later exhibited in 1972 as his Bunk! series but
at the
time
he showed
them at the ICA they were meant as examples of popular
art rather than as finished works. It is often incorrectly reported by
art historians that Paolozzi's presentation was at the first
meeting of the Independent Group. It was actually at the first meeting of
the Young
Group, founded by Dorothy Morland, the Assistant
Director of the I.C.A.(12) During the first
meeting of the ICA's subcommittee
on lecture policy on January 29, 1952, it was noted
that a group of young members of the ICA had been formed who wished to organize
lectures for themselves.(13) It was referred
to as the Young Group to distinguish it from two other groups that existed
at the time - the Television Study
Group and the Free Painters Group. Later in the year, after Paolozzi's "Bunk" presentation
had already taken place, the Young Group evolved into the Independent Group.
The name "Independent Group" was first
used at a meeting of the ICA Managing Committee on November 12, 1952.(14)

THIS IS TOMORROW

A comic book and the word "Pop" (as part of the brand
name,
"Tootsie Pop") were also included in a 1956 collage, Just
what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? which was used to advertise the "This is Tomorrow" exhibition
at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London from August 9
to September 9, 1956. The exhibition has been incorrectly characterized by
some art historians as an Independent Group project. "This is Tomorrow" actually began as a proposal from the French "groupe espace" who
wanted to organize an English exhibition to demonstrate the synthesis of art
and architecture. After English artists declined to participate in the show,
the British architect and designer Theo Crosby, was brought in to help produce
what would be, presumably, a more home-grown exhibition.(15) Only
half of the artists who showed their work had been involved with the Independent
Group.

POP

Four months after the exhibition, one of the artists involved with it, Richard Hamilton wrote a letter
to the architects Alison and Peter Smithson who had also participated in "This
is Tomorrow." In
the letter he defined some of the attributes of what he called "Pop
Art" which
was meant as a term to describe the popular arts rather than fine art. However,
some
of the characteristics that Hamilton attributed to the popular arts in 1957
could also be applied to the American Pop Art movement of
the 1960s.

Richard Hamilton (from a letter to the Smithsons dated January
16, 1957)

"Dear Peter and Alison,

I have been thinking about our conversation of the other
evening... My view is that another show should be as highly disciplined
and unified in conception as this one ['This is Tomorrow'] was chaotic...
Suppose we were to start with the objective of providing a unique solution
to the specific requirements of a domestic environment e.g. some kind of
shelter, some kind of equipment, some kind of art. This solution could
then be formulated and rated on the basis of compliance with a table of
characteristics of Pop Art.

Even earlier than Hamilton, another artist exhibiting at "This is Tomorrow," John McHale, had coined the term "Pop Art" in conversation with Lawrence Alloway circa 1954, according to an interview with McHale's son.

Warhol would not have known about McHale or Hamilton in the 1950s, however he was certainly aware of Hamilton by 1963 when he met the artist in Los Angeles at a party for Marcel Duchamp during
Duchamp's retrospective at the Pasadena Museum, curated by Walter Hopps.(17)
One of Hamilton's students, Mark
Lancaster would later appear in several of Warhol's
early movies, including Batman Dracula and a Kiss film
with Gerard Malanga, in addition to also helping Warhol stretch his early Flower series
and the
Most Wanted Men series.

Paolozzi had a much higher profile in the 1950s than Hamilton or McHale,
although he was known mostly as a sculptor. His Bunk collages were reproduced
in Horizon magazine
and his work was shown at the Venice Biennales of 1952, 1954 and 1960. His
first
American
solo exhibition was at the Betty Parson Gallery from March 14 - April 2,
1960 and his bronze sculptures had been exhibited in the group show
"New Images of Man" at the Museum of Modern Art in 1959. Paolozzi
was also mentioned in the American art magazine Art
News as
early as 1953.

Although Paolozzi exhibited in the U.S., there is no evidence that his work or the work of the other artists from the Independent Group, played a role in the beginnings of American Pop. Art news tended to travel from the U.S. to England, rather than vice-versa.

Lawrence Alloway:

"I'm not aware of an [influence], and equally,
I don't think English Pop Art turned out to have much future, one of
the reasons being the comparative weakness of the formal traditions of
painting
and collage in England. English art is frequently more graphic than painterly...
Whereas, it is quite clear that even when the Pop artists, just as the
Minimal artists, were rejecting Abstract Expressionism, they were benefiting
from
its formal performance and, so, you have got a high level of execution
combined with this quoted subject matter. In England the quotidian subject
matter
was not reinforced by a similar pictorial sophistication so that it seems
to me that American Pop artists went ahead and diversified, whereas the
English equivalent - although early - had no future..."(21)

Although the British pop artists had used comic strip imagery
in some of their works, none had done what Warhol would do - paint large
individual canvases reproducing single comic book panels complete with
speech bubbles. However, there was another American artist who was using similar cartoon imagery as Warhol around the same time as Warhol - Roy Lichtenstein. It would be as a result of seeing
Lichtenstein's work that Warhol would stop painting comic strip characters
and start painting soup cans.